"Look I don't think pounding on this clearly tungston-aquamarine compound vault door thing is going to make it budge just because you punched it extra hard; besides, if you keep making such a racket, you'll attract more of those guardian golem things," a human woman mage mithered as she pulled at her soaked uniform: she's wearing a swashbuckler-like shortdress, reinforced stockings, a fluffy elbow-low hoodless cloak, and shearling boots.

  With another booming and vaguely metallic bang, a muscular, human-leaning, demi-human wolvish tank slammed his giant darksteel warhammer into the aforementioned towering wall of a door, which was currently keeping the three individuals out of the ruined temple.

  "We're racing against the clock here, Minie! We barely held off that last wave of vaultarine golems thanks to their programming being prioritised to protect those glowing lanterns," the five-inch-tall male dark fairy announced frantically, flailing his arms about as his chainmail armour rattled like a cluster of chains. As the two arguing members cooled off and stopped being at each other's throats, Minie and the tank froze up as they sensed an overwhelmingly heavy pressure come over them, putting them into a breathless state, which confused the fairy.

  "Why is it always me being left in the dark?" the dark fairy complained while his companions doubled their efforts to open the vault door.

  The trio were so focused on the giant vault door and how to get through it that they didn't notice as the iron snowboard arrived at the bottom of the dune, carrying a pouting Mymbi in tow. The aquatic-based kaiser beast huffed angerly, aggressively slapping her sharky tail against the iron snowboard and shattering it, as her copper features oxidised.

  "Stupid, Mr Zalroth, making me look stupid in front of... wait, I'm the only one of my siblings who can see through water," Mymbi uttered distastefully, her animosity leaking out of her for the briefest of moments, which compounded to the non-fairy duo's already terrorised nerves. And before the other three could notice her, Mymbi slammed her tail into the sand-coated ground, flinging herself back towards the atmosphere mana veil high above.

  "What was that?" Minie shouted in shock as she and her companions swung their heads back, only to see nothing but the shattered shards of the iron snowboard. "Can a surfboard even make it this far into the ocean?"

  A series of loud, crumbling bangs rippled from above, snatching the trio's attention right away as a legion of vaultarine golems erupted from the side vents of the ruined temple. With the boulder-sized aquamarine-coloured cobblestone golems rushing on the offensive, opaque water surged from the cracks in the vaultarine golems' forms and morphed into long limbs sporting fists/various weapons.

  But, unlike his fellow companion's worried expressions, the dark fairy's eyes lit up with relief as he watched the unruly swarm of vaultarine golems being shattered into even smaller pieces of aquamarine-coloured debris.

  Donning a magically-constructed, fully steel fireman axe, Zalroth hacked and slashed his way through each and every single vaultarine golem that got in his way as he dive-bombed from above. Unapologetically grinning like a madman, the guy took great glee from sensing Mymbi's happiness at watching the senseless destruction, mainly the ear-pleasing ding the golem's cores made when smashed.

  "That isn't supposed to be our scout... right?" the wolvish tank uttered, unsure whether to be happy or not that someone who can easily dispatch the vaultarine golems appeared out of nowhere.

  "Zalroth, try not to smash them all, you still need at least one for the door," Zalina pouted telepathically to Zalroth, metathorically slapping the guy out of his battle-crazed state. With her tail latched around the guy's waist, Mymbi swifly clung to Zalroth's back; as she glared at the back of the guy's head, Mymbi directed her hostility at the other kitsune that was residing within the guy's Shinsokuko Realm (inner world formed by someone's soul).

  "Party pooper!" Mymbi called out, pouting equally as hard as Zalina was, only for a less reasonable reason. Struggling to stifle a snicker from the two girls' bickering, Zalroth amusedly covered his mouth to hide his amusement. Not that it worked when a sharp pain pierced through his mind from the girl sporting a similar name to his own.

  Zalroth jokingly requested Zalina to hold off on the headache, getting an angry pout from a physically absent kitsune as she relented on whatever she did to cause the headache.

  Letting out a sigh of relief at his newfound mental clarity, Zalroth threw his free hand to the side, palming a vaultarine golem in the face and tightly grabbing hold of it. Flexing his fingers and digging them into the golem's body, Zalroth conjured a small earth magic behind his hand before uttering, "Shatter"

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  Cringing at the wrong spell command, Zalina grumbled under her breath, "Zalroth, you said the wrong phrase, AGAIN! It's crumble for earth magic, shatter is for glass/crystal-like magic."

  "It sounds like you're just nitpicking me," Zalroth said with a cheeky tone, followed by a pouty hum exploding from Zalina.

  "It's not! When you say the wrong phrase, it weakens the spell more than not saying anything at all!" Zalina exclaimed, her mana-based and kid-shaped/sized form manifesting into reality as she landed a fury of light jabs against the back of the guy's head. With Zalina floating above him, Zalroth playfully swatted at the mini attack storm.

  "Ok-ok, I get it. But I take it, saying spell command: Fissure and above is a no-go?"

  "... I... don't think it really matters in this case since we're mid-air," Zalina grumbled exhaustedly, reconsidering if everything Zalroth is going to say to her is engineered to push her buttons because of what she did the other day. "You aren't mad at me because I made sundaes for everyone and didn't stop Zaki in time before she ate your portion when she got drunk?"

  "Course not, but I'm not the one who was still thinking about that, if you catch my drift," Zalroth teased as he winked at Zalina.

  Slumping her swirling, pink/cyan mist-like shoulders in a dreadful revulsion, Zalina collapsed on top of Zalroth's head like a limp noodle as she meekly uttered, "So, Unoma put you up to it."

  "You should've seen the look on Chronia's face when telling me how awful it was that I couldn't eat the sundae. It was especially funny to me when Chronia started pouting that she couldn't get very mad at Sunoshuuzaki because of the dumb look she had on her drunk face. Fissure."

  With the last part of his sentence being an advanced spell command, the earth magic circle shone to life. Under the earth spell's influence, cracks shot through the trapped vaultarine golem before it violently exploded into shrapnel. Striking the surrounding golems, the small pieces flung out in every direction, leaving only the football-sized lantern-like golem core behind in Zalroth's grasp.

  Now that Zalina was thoroughly deflated, emotionally at least, her kitsune essence smugly raised the golem core over his head and hurled it at the vault door like a dodge ball with a loud sonic boom.

  The core rocketed through the air, blasting right over the three individuals by the vault door, and bounced off the matching groove in the centre of the vault door. The collision let out a ringing ding like a failed half-court shot, exasperating Zalroth's amusement that the most damage he received so far was through his pride.

  Following the failed score, Zalroth dropkicked the glowing lanten-esque core, striking it with enough force to socket it into the matching groove fully. With the core socketed into the wall, all the remaining vaultarine golems halted their advance, briefly buffering before blasting off towards the top of the ruined temple and diving into its side vents from which they originally emerged.

  The three grounded individuals were left at a loss for words, either from awe or confusion, watching Zalroth backflip through the air and land perfectly on the sandy ground right in front of them.

  "Hello, my fellow Voyagers. Hope you don't mind if I drop in unannounced," Zalroth said energetically, with his fellow voyagers unabashedly nodding their heads in approval. As they slowly processed what happened in front of them, they all somehow completely ignored Mymbi's presence.

  Clearing her throat with some effort to calm her nerves, Minie asked with a slightly nervous tone, "I take it you're the one who took the request to be one of our team's scouts?"

  With a cheeky snicker, Zalroth turned himself around to face the others, his demeanour snapping Zalina back to reality before disappearing from view and retreating back into the guy's Shinsokuko Realm.

  "Well, my honeybun does say I have a knack for sniffing out trouble," Zalroth remarked cheekily. But as he took a head count of the trio, "Say, I'm sure the squad list had three voyagers and one navigator?"

  "Oh, Xavier. After we were ambushed and managed to beat one of those golems, it dropped a lantern that alerted the other active ones. So he kinda booked it with the lantern to get the swarm off the rest of us," Minie explained, slightly embarrassed at recounting how easily that vaultarine golem managed to get past their detection.

  "Yeah, he'll probably be back soon since the vaultarine golems seem to have retreated, thanks to your intervention. Oh, I'm Nueval, "Nueval the wolvish tank stated, offering a handshake. Zalroth went to reciprocate the gesture but was beaten to the punch by Mymbi's tail fin.

  "As long as you aim for where water's coming from, their no tougher than an overcooked slab of meat," Mymbi retorted boastfully, having watched how Zalroth dealt with said golems up close. The kaiser beast's sudden speech caught the two non-fairies' attention, finally bringing Mymbi's existence to the forefront of their minds as they only now acknowledged her firmly clinging to Zalroth's back.

  "How'd I manage to miss a whole person? Am I Daucus or something?" Minie muttered with mild amusement while Daucus Carota, the dark fairy, angrily protested that he'd miss something so obvious.